The Last Day
by Stormcrown201
Summary: The last week before the departure of the Initiative, Tamara Ryder wanders the Citadel and Puerto Rico and remembers what she has lost, and what she will be forced to lose when she leaves on a journey she never wanted to go on.


**Author's Note:** Trigger warning for extreme self-esteem and anxiety issues, plus references to past abuse and bullying.

* * *

The last day of the second to last week before the departure of the Initiative, Tamara spends wandering the Citadel.

The morning she spends on the Presidium, browsing the shops though she cannot buy anything now. There is much that she would like: merchandise of her favourite shows, model ships, replicas of turian, salarian, and asari cultural artefacts made for tourists, all things that she would take with her. But she's already packed, and she can take no more.

She won't defy them. It never occurs to her to defy them.

Still, she thinks, _What's the point, anyway? It's only another tie to everything I'll be losing. Why would I… But it would be nice to have more._ Then she thinks, as she always does when she starts on this theme, _I never wanted this. Ever._

Then her chest goes tight, and the feeling goes out of her fingers, and the world spins, and she squeezes her Alliance-frigate-shaped stress ball in her pocket, but that barely helps.

After leaving the shops, Tamara goes down into the gardens and walks among them. Asari plants this week, as they so often seem to be (no surprise that the most powerful, whorish race has the credits to buy more time for their plants and the vanity to care about doing so). They'll grow these plants in Andromeda, maybe, but it won't be the same. She sniffs at them, touches them if she can, watches them. Plants have never been her thing—she's an engineer, not a botanist—but there is beauty in them now. The Citadel and its rotating greenery… she will miss this.

What won't she miss?

She wanders and wanders, letting her feet carry her wherever they will, but she finds after a time that she's retracing old familiar steps. There are the Presidium laboratories. There are the classrooms she spent more time in than she did in the old apartment when she was growing up. There are the parks and cafés and cinemas and embassies and C-Sec offices and everything else that's on the Presidium. Even the places she's never had cause to be in bring back memories.

_See, Danielle left you there,_ she remembers with a flinch, looking at the apartments where her ex-girlfriend may still live. Danielle had kicked her out there, after years of treating her like pond scum.

_Stupid, spineless little bitch with a stupid father. The apple never falls far from the tree. Get out! They're all abandoning you, and they'll all abandon me, too. I can't have that. Get out, you spineless little shit! I hope you get what you deserve!_ The mere memory brings tears to her eyes and seems to cave her chest in, and she spends half an hour sobbing and panicking, somewhere quiet where no one will see her.

Strange. She should be glad Danielle had dumped her. _One good thing Dad's AI research did. But…_

But everything had blown up in her face once Alec's research had been exposed, not just her relationship. She may have got free of Danielle, but only because _nobody_ wanted anything more to do with her, the daughter of the fallen Alec Ryder. Faced with all that…

_Damn you. I never wanted this. Ever,_ she thinks, and hot fury at her father coalesces like a lump of coal in her chest. Alec Ryder's fallen daughter, fallen because of her father, as if that was the only worth she had.

_Isn't it?_

Afterwards, Tamara can't stop crying, but she forces herself to leave and go to the Wards. This was once her home, and it is a great place, the heart of the galaxy, and she will never see it again. Her home, which Andromeda never will be.

_Don't think of Andromeda._ But she thinks of it at every turn, as she wanders the halls and remembers what she's lost, what she will lose. A few people stare at her as she passes by, and she wonders if it's because of her tears and shaking chest, or because of the birthmark whose placement makes it seem like she has a perpetual black eye. Something else she wishes she could lose but will follow her everywhere.

_The Black-Eyed Ryder,_ they used to call her, at school, among other less charming names. Danielle once got drunk and punched her hard enough to give her a matching mark over her other eye. The next day, when she was sober, she laughed and laughed.

As did Oliver. As did her crewmates, and they only laughed harder when she told them her girlfriend did it.

_Girls don't punch girls. Girls are pure. Girls are angels. They would never hit their girlfriends. Not like filthy men._ Isn't that what they say?

There's the med clinic. There are the markets. There's another cinema. Places from her childhood that may well be long gone by the time they arrive in Andromeda. Places she wishes she could stay in. They hold more joy than Andromeda ever will. They are where she wants to be, even if the people there who hear her name step away from her in disgust and scowl at her, as though she had researched AI.

She would scream in rage, but she's never been one for that.

Later, she goes to a restaurant, and she has her last meal here, a popular salarian dish for dinner followed by tembleque for dessert. _Danielle used to take you,_ she remembers, and she smacks her forehead, grinds her fingers into her temple, wishing she could just get _rid_ of these memories or at the least keep them from intruding. But Danielle still has her claws in her skin even now. _She would be so sweet, but if you made a mess or ate wrong, she'd start laughing and mocking you. Nobody ever saw…_

She leaves with more tears running from her eyes and panic building in her chest, as it has done every day this past week.

In the late evening, she gathers up her belongings and steps onto the shuttle. She leans against the window and watches as they leave, watches the Citadel get smaller and smaller until it is entirely out of sight. Then she watches as they approach the mass relay: the last time she will ever see one, no doubt.

They go through, and she sits down, curls up, and buries her face in her knees. The panic takes her, and all she can think is: girlfriend, career, friendships, and now home and place in the Milky Way. All lost. All because of her father. And he couldn't even be bothered to apologise.

_I never wanted to leave. I wanted to stay here. But your stupid research forced me to. I could never have succeeded otherwise. And you don't care! You ruined my life!_ Tamara screams inside her own head, voice rising with every word. She does so because she will never have the bravery to say them aloud.

She weeps until she falls asleep for all that she has lost, and nobody notices.

* * *

The last week before the departure of the Initiative, Tamara spends in Puerto Rico.

It is no trouble to get around the island. One can be at one end in the morning and then at the other a scarce few hours later. She wanders in an anti-clockwise direction, going from San Juan to Guaynabo to Bayamón and on and on. She avoids Mayagüez, saving it until the very last day. While she's there, she immerses herself in the culture, one last time: going to festivals, looking at the _santos_ in the shops, wishing she could buy one to accompany her _santo_ of Our Lady of Candelaria, watching locally produced vids, listening to the cuatro and some Capo and Chayanne (among others), eating tembleque and roasted pork and pasteles and cassavas and mofongo, and more besides. She tries to remember everything, down to the merest sound and vegetable, for who can say if any other Puerto Ricans are coming on the trip?

_Stop,_ she sneers to herself. _You're not Puerto Rican. You're not even really Hispanic. You're _white_, and you hardly speak any Spanish. Sure, great-grandpa and ma were Puerto Rican, and Mom had a little of that herself, and she passed it down, but you're _white American_. Don't pretend this is yours to carry with you._

But even so, she has that heritage, and in another life, she might have belonged here. And in 600 years, where will Puerto Rico be? It could be gone, perhaps, for all she knows. If somebody can bring the memory of the sounds, the tastes, the smells, the sights, the everything, into the future… isn't that enough?

_Enough, but it will not bring back what I have lost._ Already, as Tamara wanders the Parque de los Próceres in Mayagüez and eats a piragua, she feels like an outsider. Her great-grandparents came from this city, and her grandmother, but she had moved to the mainland and married her grandfather. Her mother was brought up with rather less of the culture, and Tamara and Oliver with even less. Oliver cares nothing for it, but she… she would have liked to have belonged here. But it was never home, and even now it seems lost to her.

The first time she wakes up after the Initiative has left, all these people milling about and their descendants to the nth degree will be dead.

At any other time, the idea would send her into a blind panic, but right now, she is beyond panic. Her hands tremble, her head is light, her chest might cave in from the pressure, her stomach churns, but the fear that she has already carried around with her cannot touch her now. That, perhaps, is what resignation feels like, the sensation when one's doom is inevitable and no other option remains but to forge ahead. _Once more unto the breach…_

Her omni-tool flashes a notification, and she finishes her piragua and opens it up. An email from a company she had applied for, looking for engineers. Her qualifications were robust enough: Alliance education and service, recommendations by her superiors, a few years of experience, but…

A rejection, of course, the same as all the others, and it dashes her last hope for quitting the Initiative and remaining here. Tamara shakes her head, but this time, tears don't spring to her eyes like they have every other time. There's no point.

It's phrased politely enough, like all the others, but still, she wonders, _Did you really find someone better, or is it because of my name? Because I'm _his_ daughter, and who wants that even though I've no record of AI research? Here I thought nepotism… or reverse-nepotism, or whatever this is… was supposed to be dead in this century. But no! Reject the promising engineer because of her deadbeat dad!_ Her thoughts are filled with sudden fury. _Why didn't I change my name when I had the chance?_

The bitterness is ugly in her chest, rising and choking her like a toxic cloud, twisting her mouth into a snarl and tightening her hand around her empty cup. It chases away the resignation, and now the tears come, and she collapses into a seat and curls up into a ball.

Once again, no one notices. Perhaps there was no place for her here after all.

Later, after she has done crying for what must be the thousandth time, she returns to the hotel and gathers her belongings. She checks out, grabs a taxi, and heads to the spaceport some miles outside Mayagüez. She makes the connection just in time, catching a shuttle to the place where the Initiative will meet and make their final preparations before boarding the arks. Earth soon falls away beneath her, and she watches and watches as it gets smaller, turns into the Pale Blue Dot Carl Sagan once deemed it, or something like it. The last time, the very last time, what might and should have been home… going… going… gone.

_I never wanted this. Ever,_ Tamara thinks again, for the thousandth time, and the bitterness returns and renews its grip on her throat. She rests her head against the window, muscles going taut, blood running sickly warm, hands trembling. Her breathing comes harsh and heavy, and she half-wants to rip her skin off, to tear away her birthmark, to shed everything that makes her who she is—most of all her bloody family name. _I never wanted—but you made me…_

The wrath carries her all the way to the station, though she remains her usual doormat self on the outside, speaking no word of criticism and following her every order to the letter. Alec looks fondly on her, and she can't even muster up a glare. There's no point. She's lost everything in this venture, gained nothing, and he will never see, never even guess. Oliver laughs and makes friends and looks ahead, and he cares just as little.

Finally, in the last shuttle to the ark, the final journey before the great journey, she presses her nose to the glass and watches Earth again. She names the countries they see, wonders if she might have found a life in any of them. They all would have been better than Andromeda. Oliver makes a token effort by putting his hand on her shoulder, but as he will do no more, she ignores him. Andromeda will not fix things between them.

Then Earth is gone, and now her doom approaches, and her blood runs such a sickly warm that she fears she might be sick. The old anxiety returns, with full force. _No, no, I can't do this, please, let me get down, why did you let me come, please, no!_

She spends the rest of the journey sobbing and panicking, and when she boards the ark and heads down to enter cryo, the tear tracks are still fresh on her face, and her cheeks are still bloodless, and her hands are still shaking. Once again, no one notices.

_They will speak of the future,_ she muses, just as the stasis is activated. _But I will be the one to remember what we've lost._


End file.
